The Reaper's Image

"The Reaper's Image" is a horror short story by American writer Stephen King, first published in Startling Mystery Stories in 1969 and collected in Skeleton Crew in 1985. The story is about an antique mirror haunted by the visage of the Grim Reaper, who appears to those who gaze into it.

Background
King first wrote the story in 1966, the summer before he started college. He was paid $35 for the story, which was his second to be published commercially.

Plot summary
The story concerns a visit by an antique collector, Johnson Spangler, to the Samuel Claggert Museum in his attempt to buy the legendary Delver's Mirror. The museum curator, Mr. Carlin, ushers Spangler through the building, recounting the history of this rare Elizabethan mirror, which incidents of attempted destruction have plagued. The museum curator also explains the infamous history of the mirror, recounting all the people who have looked into the mirror had mysteriously disappeared.

Carlin tells a skeptical Spangler that an image of the Grim Reaper is rumored to appear in the mirror, standing close to the viewer. Spangler scoffs, but feels unnatural horror when he looks into the mirror and claims to see some duct tape in the mirror's corner. He angrily confronts Carlin, who claimed the mirror was undamaged. However, Carlin claims that there is no duct tape, and Spangler is "seeing the reaper." When Spangler runs his hand over the "duct tape", he feels a smooth surface rather than the rough outside of the tape. When Spangler looks again, the duct tape is gone. As Carlin relates the history of a high school boy who saw the Reaper and disappeared without a trace, Spangler becomes ill and rushes out of the second floor as Mr. Carlin remains behind to wait.

Reception
Literary critic Michael R. Collings writes that although it draws on Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft, "The Reaper's Image" was "a stronger, more independent piece of atmospheric horror than King had yet produced", making use of flashbacks, self-consistent characterizations, and "allow[ing] the mystery Delver mirror to develop its own power".